Teen prank ends in scuffle, man's arrest

Homeowner charged after tackling teen he says trespassed at his home

BETHLEHEM -- A teenage prank at a Saturday night sleepover in the Haswell Farms development went awry and ended with a startled homeowner's arrest.

The Delmar resident, in his underwear after having gone to bed, tackled one of the fleeing boys in his yard and waited for police to arrive, only to be charged with endangering the welfare of a child and second-degree harassment. He was issued an appearance ticket to answer the misdemeanor and violation charges in Bethlehem Town Court on Aug. 3.

Not charged were the teens, who allegedly pounded on his back door, rang his front doorbell and skulked around his property in the dark -- punctuated by a torrent of profanities from the slow-footed boy the man caught and kept inside his house until the cops got there.

"It's an awkward situation," said Daniel P. Van Plew, 37, vice president and general manager of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, a Tarrytown-based biopharmaceutical company with a manufacturing facility in East Greenbush. He declined to discuss his arrest further and offered this account of the Saturday night dust-up through his attorney, Peter Gerstenzang.

Shortly after 10 p.m., with his wife, 3-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son all upstairs in their beds, Van Plew remembered he had left paperwork on a dining room table and went downstairs in his underwear to move it to his desk so it would be secure.

That's when he caught a glimpse out a window of a shadowy figure standing close to his house, along with some other movement out front.

"It was pretty scary. He had no idea what was going on," Gerstenzang said. As he headed to the garage to investigate, he heard pounding on his back door and ringing of his front doorbell. As he disabled a home alarm system and opened a side door off the garage, he heard muffled voices saying, "Go, go!"

Van Plew then yelled: "What are you doing? Are you trying to rob me?"

When he saw four figures bolt across his yard, he gave chase, caught up to the slowest one and tackled him. It turned out to be a 14-year-old boy, who began cursing at Van Plew, Gerstenzang said.

He got the kid inside his house and told him to sit on the floor and called police.

"He was very angry at being tackled and was very profane," Gerstenzang said, adding that the teen spewed crude sexual remarks about Van Plew's wife. At one point, the boy said he had a knife in his pocket and threatened to use it on Van Plew, but it turned out to be a cellphone.

Gerstenzang said the 14-year-old suffered scrapes and bruises from being tackled, and Van Plew offered to treat the injuries with antiseptic but the boy refused.

Gerstenzang denied that Van Plew threatened the teenager with violence if he tried to escape before police arrived, as the teen allegedly told police in a statement, according to an e-mail from a town insider who calls himself "the Delmar tipster."

Gerstenzang said that Van Plew later learned the four teenagers were at a sleepover in his suburban development of $350,000 to $400,000 homes off Feura Bush Road and may have been engaged in a prank to scare homeowners.

"It's a nightmare for him," the attorney said. "He's got two little kids asleep, these four figures are moving around his house in the dark, pounding on his door, ringing his doorbell, and he's frightened. Under the circumstances, I think his reaction was pretty moderate."

Van Plew joined Regeneron in 2007 after serving as executive vice president for R&D and technical operations of Crucell Holland B.V., a global biopharmaceutical company. He has a master's degree in chemistry from Pennsylvania State University and an MBA from Michigan State University.

Regeneron has therapeutic candidates in clinical trials for the potential treatment of gout, age-related macular degeneration, central retinal vein occlusion and certain cancers, according to the company website.

Reach Paul Grondahl at 454-5623 or by e-mail at pgrondahl@timesunion.com.